British period piece import Toast, playing at a handful of Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles this weekend as part of their “From Britain With Love” series, is a well-acted if somewhat meandering and pedantic coming-of-age story, based on the memoir of Nigel Slater, a popular English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. Fans of EastEnders and all other sorts of across-the-pond television, as well as kitchen-sink dramas in general, will find reward in the detail and clarity of this tale.

The movie opens in Wolverhampton in the late 1960s, where nine-year-old
Nigel (Oscar Kennedy, quite superb and sympathetic) lives with his
mother (Victoria Hamilton) and father (Ken Stott). Nigel seems bright
and curious, about food in particular, but neither of his parents seem
to understand him very much. A plaintive voiceover tells us he’s “never
had veggies that weren’t from a tin,” and his mother not only
discourages any culinary adventurousness but also seems basically
clueless in the kitchen. (The film takes its title for the default
family dinner when things get burned, or Nigel’s mom forgets to open
cans before boiling beans.)

Nigel tries his hand at cooking, but
as his mom falls ill with an inoperable respiratory condition, the
family falls apart. When she passes, Nigel is left alone with his
father. Until, that is, housekeeper Joan (Helena Bonham Carter) sets her
romantic sights on him, targeting his heart via his stomach. Flash
forward more than a couple years and Nigel, now a teenager (Finding Neverland‘s Freddie
Highmore, above), feels even more isolated, having moved away from his friends
and out to the country. Joan, as ever, still holds sway over Nigel’s
father, and they eventually wed. But, emboldened by a home economics
class at school, Nigel makes plans to pursue his culinary interests more
fully, and “out-cook” his un-matronly nemesis, thus winning over his
father.

If one wasn’t familiar with the fact that Toast was based
on a true story, one could easily intuit that from the movie’s faults.
The adaptation, by Billy Elliot screenwriter Lee Hall, aims righteously
for adolescent feeling, and has a capable enabler for that mission in
neophyte Kennedy. The problem is that Toast feels rather scattershot in
its focus and tone, and doesn’t successfully identify a main problem or
conflict. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (BBC Films/Ruby Film & TV, unrated, 96 minutes)

A lot of nature documentaries, or films that look at animals, focus in either/or fashion on their behavioral impulses or relationship to and interaction with humans, ignoring the potentiality of a more complex causal relationship. In other words, do human masters, even kind ones, make some animals sad? The heartwarming and thought-provoking new documentary One Lucky Elephant tacitly asks this and other tough questions in presenting a look at a compassionate but aging pachyderm owner who’s searching for a suitable place to retire his circus elephant.

David Balding adopted Flora, an orphaned African baby elephant, when she was only two years old, and made her the central attraction of his St. Louis-based traveling show. After 16 years, however, Balding, beset with some health problems himself, begins to sense that Flora is no longer happy performing. Not wanting to merely sell her to a zoo or another circus, Balding first explores a tribal reservation in Botswana, but that falls through. While he beseeches Carol Buckley, the operator of a sanctuary in Tennessee whose organization does not take African elephants for fear of mixing them with their Asian elephant population, to change her mind, Balding makes arrangements to temporarily house Flora at the Miami Metro Zoo. An incident there, however, risks Flora’s extended stay.

Directed by Lisa Leeman, One Lucky Elephant is an extraordinary movie about inter-species relationships, and the beauty, enrichment and, ultimately, constraints of those bonds. Beginning in the infancy of the new millennium, the movie showcases a seemingly impatient and at times unhappy Flora, stuck in her teenage years with no other elephant companions. As the film tabs Balding’s progress in placing her long-term and Flora’s adjustment to various new surroundings, however, it also smartly winds its way back a bit to 1984, showcasing Flora’s training.

Much to its credit, Leeman’s film doesn’t lean solely on the majesty or stirring wonder of its intimate proximity to this enormous, hulking animal, which chows down on over 400 pounds of apples, potatoes, carrots, bran, grass and other food per day. One Lucky Elephant also devotes ample time and resources to capturing and exploring Balding’s conflicted feelings about owning and exploiting Flora, as well as the myopic limits of his own realizations. While Balding is extremely remorseful about having split up two-year-old Flora from her sister when he first purchased her, and also admits to broader feelings of regret related to Flora’s need to “just be an elephant,” he resists the professional diagnosis of Flora as having post-traumatic stress disorder. To Balding, it’s inconceivable that his occasional appearance for visits at Flora’s new home would or even could summon up intense feelings of abandonment and anger within Flora.

One Lucky Elephant spans an extraordinary amount of time, over a full decade, and this fact allows it to achieve a sort of natural, relaxed ranginess, without dawdling too long or foisting pat “conclusions” on an audience too soon. In fact, Leeman’s movie eschews black-and-white didacticism. Balding is seen to be a loving and devoted caregiver, but also ultimately simply unable to provide Flora with the sort of companionship she needs from others of her own kind. Their time together was beautiful, but it was destined to end. That’s a lesson with broader applicability to life, one of but several reasons that One Lucky Elephant resonates so deeply. For more information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (LLC/Sandbar Pictures, unrated, 84 minutes)